Celestial hemisphere:  Northern  ·  Constellation: Taurus (Tau)  ·  Contains:  Solar system body or event
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Comet 46P Wirtanen, The Pleiades, The Hyades, a Meteor and Interstellar Dust, Roger Clark
Comet 46P Wirtanen, The Pleiades, The Hyades, a Meteor and Interstellar Dust
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Comet 46P Wirtanen, The Pleiades, The Hyades, a Meteor and Interstellar Dust

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Comet 46P Wirtanen, The Pleiades, The Hyades, a Meteor and Interstellar Dust, Roger Clark
Comet 46P Wirtanen, The Pleiades, The Hyades, a Meteor and Interstellar Dust
Powered byPixInsight

Comet 46P Wirtanen, The Pleiades, The Hyades, a Meteor and Interstellar Dust

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Description

Comet 46/P Wirtanen made an unusually close pass by the Earth in mid-December, 2018.

The comet is about double the size of the Pleiades. The faint outer portions of the comet's coma combines with light from the reddish background interstellar dust making an olive-drab color. The blue-green color of the comet is due primarily to emission from carbon. The green color of the meteor is due to emission from ionized magnesium. The air in our atmosphere is also ionized, but the emissions of nitrogen and oxygen are in the red and infrared and not dominant in this meteor trail. The meteor was a sporadic and not associated with any meteor shower.

More info about the image, and processing is at:

http://www.clarkvision.com/galleries/gallery.astrophoto-1/web/comet-46p,m45,hyades-rnclark-img7334-472-av116-c12.17.2018.k-0.25xs.html

This image was obtained with a Canon EOS 6D Mark II DSLR Camera and Sigma 105mm f/1.4 DG

HSM Art Lens at f/1.4 and ISO 1600, 30 second exposures and 116 exposures stacked for a total of 58

minutes exposure time. No dark frame subtraction, no flat fields. Tracking with a Fornax Lightrack II

and no guiding.

Stretched with rnc-color-stretch, http://www.clarkvision.com/articles/astrophotography-rnc-color-stretch/

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Comet 46P Wirtanen, The Pleiades, The Hyades, a Meteor and Interstellar Dust, Roger Clark